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2006 Katy Corner Art News, Spring 2006 Drawing broke free of any hint at restraint in a triple whammy exhibition at Mark Hutchins Gallery in July. In this group show Richard Lewer, Scott Kennedy and James Robinson sparked off each other, carrying on a noisy conference in (mostly) shades of grey. Robinson exhibited large and small works, each one ‘crunchy’ with levels of paint, earth, detrius, nails, gravel and an old address book. Surfaces were scorched, slashed, singed and re-jigged like an archaeological dig in reverse. The works are perversely appealing; once you’re past the initial onslaught, they can be generous, allowing may routes in to Robinson’s anxious scenarios. He is often asked if he’s manic and he responds, “Our whole culture is this fast-forward thing. We’ve got this obsession with the future – we’re so ungrounded, our whole industrialised world. If we are manic maybe it’s a reaction to the world out there.” Robinson sees his work as “part of a graphic tradition that’s been going on since comics. It’s such a well-trodden path for New Zealand artists, especially at the moment. I’m trying to find a way between that and abstraction and I’m tweaking expressionism with my materials as well. I’m walking in the footsteps of giants, really,” he says. Katy Corner Art News, Spring 2006 Preview, a survey show of 40 contemporary NZ artists curated by Natasha Davies, a post-grad student at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, is on display at CoCA. The exhibition, which carries work by established and emerging artists such as James Robinson, is a chance to look at the works before biding for them at auction... Exhibition Richard Lewer, Scott Kennedy and James Robinson Kiran Chug Dominion Post, July 1, 2006 ... Robinson’s pieces bring together the graphic and the abstract in a collection that bombards the senses. The graphic works tell stories and express the psychological, while the abstracts draw attention to the artistic processes behind them. Following clues to the mystery Mark Amery
2006 Dominion Post, June 30, 2006 It’s not what’s obvious in a work of art that’s captivating. It’s what lies on the edges of the familiar and dazzling that draws us in. It’s the power of suggestion, that whiff of something ither. The easily explained provides merely the clues on the way into the wonder of a mystery or complexities of a concept. That mystery tends to be captivating because it is both familiar and unfathomable, the work promisiing to grapple with hard-to-explain ideas and perceptions at the very heart of our experience of life. It’s to this effect that the three artists showing at Mark Hutchins Gallery move between the figurative and abstract. In surrealist-inspired dances, line, shape and form take the easily readable in hand and into emotional, metaphysical and psychological territory. Any one of these emerging artists could be from the 1950s, moving pop cultural influences into the shifting, cracked planes of modernism’s revelations. These artists affirm that we’re still digging back, exploring the rich ground only just touched upon last century. Dunedin maverick James robinson gets welcome representation in Wellington. Robinson’s bigger works still tend to fall into two camps. First there’s the gritty, crusty abstracts, their surfaces cuttings from compacted detriuis or earth — gouged, cracked, burnt, blasted, pissed-upon, torn and then sewn and glued back together. There’s nothing radical here, its materialist area well mined by Europeans as diverse as Tapiers and Kiefer, but, at their best, robinson’s abstract works can create a bodily response, the impression that an emotional vein has been located and opened Following clues to the mystery Mark Amery within the compressed matter of all things. Unfortunately, I’ve seen better than shown here. For all their impressive gravity, these works lack that tension. Then there’s Robinson’s work made out of an equally obsessive violent action of layering of sheets of paper with doodles of heads and text to create a whole. They create a fug of thoughts, a kind of confused mind map, providing, like the abstract works, a compressed accretion of matter. In the impressice They Fight in Me, a background layer of old personal phonebook pages and a multitude of heads creates a chorus of voices in the artist’s head, the impression of someone frustrated and swimming in a cloud of impressions. Yet I beginn to get frustrated with Robinson’s frustration. For all the brilliant energy and the artist’s clear raw talent, his work doesn’t appear to be moving on from startling beginnings. He bludgeons me into dislike. His action is of furiously making things over and over in a vacuum of faith, calling up symbols of life and death in reference to his own (apparent) frayed state and humanity’s belief in violence in service of beliefs. There are occasional moments of great beauty, but, depressingly, the work ultimately doesn’t offer charge or change. Rather it wallows in uncertainty. Robinson scrawls in one work, “This one’s no good” and proceeds to mumble on about whether the dealer might like it or understand it, implores me to buy it and wonders whether patron James Wallace might hit on him. Who cares? ...
Page 1 and 2: James Robinson News_ feed 1999//201
Page 3 and 4: 2010 Art New Zealand No#135 Spring
Page 5 and 6: 2010 Art New Zealand No#135 Spring
Page 7 and 8: 2010 The Air New Zealand, Flight Ma
Page 9 and 10: 2009 Arts New Zealand Mark Hutchins
Page 11 and 12: 2009 The Dominion Post Mark Amery -
Page 13 and 14: 2009 David Hall NZ Listener, May 9,
Page 15 and 16: 2007 Text courtesy Dunedin Public A
Page 17 and 18: 2007 New Zealand Herald, September
Page 19 and 20: 2007 Otago Daily Times, November 1,
Page 21 and 22: 2007 New Zealand writers on New Zea
Page 23 and 24: 2007 Art News New Zealand, Summer 2
Page 25: 2006/07 Kathryn Mitchell Art New Ze
Page 29 and 30: 2005/06 The New Zealand Hearald, No
Page 31 and 32: 2005/06 Une Chance de Trop Scott Fl
Page 33 and 34: 2005 Giants Saints Monsters Book Of
Page 35 and 36: 2005 Art News New Zealand, Spring 2
Page 37 and 38: 2003 Dark versus light in mind’s
Page 39 and 40: 2003 New Zealand Listener, 5 July 2
Page 41 and 42: 2003 Otago Daily Times, Early 2003
Page 43 and 44: 2003 With passion for angst Warren
Page 45 and 46: 2002 Sunday Star Times, 19 May 2002

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